The Lion
by mirenne
Summary: Set after "The Mortal Cure." Mick suddenly returns to his vampiric state after weeks as a mortal, and he's dry, very dry. Warning: No sex, language or graphic violence, but some very dark imagery. Better to be safe than to offend.


**The Lion**

**Disclaimers: All of the characters and concepts concerning Moonlight don't belong to me, sadly enough. They are the sole property of CBS, Joel Silver, and many other people with lots more creative talent. Please don't sue me. I have no money. Nor do I look to make any with this dark little tale.**

_**WARNING: **_**This one is intense. No sex or language or graphic violence, but definitely not for the kids. Despite all his moral posturing, Mick's a vampire. He's admitted to doing terrible, unforgivable things, and he's fully aware that, unless he keeps himself in check, he could do them again...Also, the Cleaner in this piece is the first cleaner we saw in the series. The majestic, strong one, who looked like she could take Mick in a fight..or back him up in one. **

_They say the devil is like a thief in the night, who comes only to steal, to kill, and to destroy. __They say he roams like a roaring lion, seeking whom he can devour._

_Tonight, he drives me. Tonight, I am the devil. __And I embrace it._

The edge of his balcony was before him, and he was flying over it, freefalling, the night air whipping his skin in a razor's caress as he fell and fell and fell, careening off the foreheads of gargoyles, off the balconies of the sleeping and the mortal to the street far below. He hit the concrete with a shattering crack and rolled, roaring in pain, arms bent back, legs and ankles and knees in a marionette's crumple. His vision frosted in red, then black…

…and then he was back, returned from somewhere betwixt and between to his own undead flesh. His body newly healed, straining, buzzing with need and rage and _hunger_ that burned through empty veins. He smelled blood- lots of it. His own, flat, thick and unenticing. The blood of others. Those he had never seen, never known. The cold vacant blood of the already dead that had failed to satisfy, that _should_ never satisfy, no matter how quickly Guillermo moved to collect it. He'd torn the bags in frustration and dire need, leaving them strewn in tatters, emptying themselves in small running streams and abandoned droplets. He licked his fingers, tasting their remnants mixed with his own distinct ichor.

No. He needed more. He needed life. A heartbeat. A gasp. The moan of pain and desire as sharp teeth pierced down through flesh. The flicker of lashes as eyes rolled back, limbs shook and consciousness yielded. The stolen heat seeping into his veins, the only warmth that mattered. He'd gone too long without to be restored by less. Weeks of mortality had given way, and he was desiccated. Starved and weak. The food which sustained him as a human had done nothing to nourish his other self.

With one swift, unnatural motion, his body shifted planes, from sprawling horizontal and twisted to a graceful stance, the long line of him poised in the shadows of the building where he'd landed. He rubbed his hands over his face, scrubbing away the redness that had dribbled down his chin, wiping dirt from his cheeks. His fingers combed through his hair, and he straightened his coat, forcing himself to believe in his own respectability.

His feet began to move in a direction, and his body followed willingly, faster and faster, until he felt like he was flying, dodging and weaving through tangled crowds and neon traffic almost quicker than the mortal eye could register.

This was how he hunted. Randomly moving, randomly viewing until, finally, exhausted, half blinded with thirst and strung out on the lights and sounds of the city, of the thousands of bodies on its downtown streets, he'd make his choice and strike…

…Time returned him to himself. Perhaps it was minutes later, perhaps hours, he didn't know. His eyes were tightly closed, the aftermath of blissful repletion giving way to fragile denial. There was a weight against his torso, heavy and awkward. If he but opened his eyes, he'd see them both, like some nightmare mirror image of the Pieta. Him the weeping Mary with the dead Savior in his arms.

The smell of blood was overwhelming, tickling at his nostrils, filling his senses with its precious, irreplaceable complexity. He breathed it in and felt the exchange, that despicable transaction of death for sweet life, made mere moments ago. The blood coursed through his arteries, skirling along the interior of his heart before rushing out again over and over, filling him with power, force, energy, intellect, _everything._ But it was a stolen essence, never meant for his consumption and easily exhausted by the transfer.

He raised his head defiantly at the sky and began to keen, an animalistic, wild sound. Emotion without thought. Mourning himself as he rocked them back and forth.

Weeping, he grasped the body to him, pulling it closer in one last hideous embrace, levering his legs free so that he could stand. The head lolled, further than anatomy allowed, touching his forearm, snapping back and forth with each small movement, dangling, ripped nearly free of its column of bone. Still, he refused to look, clamping his eyes tightly closed, sparing himself the full knowledge of identity and extent. (Here his senses betrayed him: male, young and well proportioned, scented with health and vigor underneath the mask of alcohol and cigarettes.)

Softly, reverently, he laid the body down as his lungs heaved with aftershock, and looked around, searching out location and threat from waist level and above. Where there had been two, now there was one, and he was alone, secreted somewhere in the back alley of a storage facility. He had been here before. One of these looming blocks was his own, a repository of paperwork and mementos, things anachronistic and unuseful, but too dear to discard.

Another sob clutched at his body, tearing from his throat as he stepped away, quick slides of his feet carrying him across the lot to a safe, uninvolved distance. Sticky fingers probed clumsily at the pockets of jacket and jeans, closing at last over the smooth metal of his cell phone. He swallowed hard, steadying his thoughts, preparing to give voice to words he hadn't used in so long. Not like this. Memory guided his fingers. A number, then a ring, and an impersonal voice answered, "Cleaner. What's your location?"

His tongue refused to move, resting leaden, frozen in his mouth.

"Hello?"

Air filled his lungs and he forced it up his throat, his voice emerging hoarse and cracked, "I need a clean up. Fifth and…"

…She slid out of her car, closing the door with a snap, already calling to the men emerging from the van beside her. "Get it out of here. Fast."

She lifted her face to the night air, scenting the blood, letting it bring its memories to her, savoring the intensity of the hunt, the ferocity of the kill. Seeing the final moments played like a movie on the canvas of her mind. _Ah. So that's how it went._

Her eyes searched the dark corners nearby for the figure she knew she'd find, a wretched honor guard standing watch for his dead. A form huddled in the shadows of an alley some fifty yards away. As she closed the distance, she saw him more clearly, his arms raised white and waxy over his face, dried blood branching over the skin in petrified rivulets, staining his clothes in stiffening burgundy splotches.

"Mick?" He failed to acknowledge her or lower his hands, as he gently rocked side to side in time with the motion of the heart beating red inside his chest. She dropped to her knees and slowly reached out, laying her hands on his wrists. "Mick, it's okay. It's okay." White eyes flickered to her, glaring, denying, maddened with grief, and she shushed him with little noises, not daring to say more, pulling him forward to gather him to her.

She held him tenderly, dark curls tucked under her chin, as he began to weep once more, sobbing raw and incoherent into the night. It was the sound of torture, of despair, of a thousand thousand nights of self denial left broken and irreparable.

It was heartbreaking.

Finally, when he had quieted, retreating into a near comatose haze of guilt and shame, and her men had nearly finished their work, she started to rise, pulling him up with her. "Come on, let's go." She heaved him the rest of the way, bracing her shoulder under his arm, leading him toward her car. He followed, stilted and stumbling, until she heard him whisper, "Wait…the wallet."

"No, Mick. That's not a good idea."

But he'd stopped, intractable, already struggling to pivot them back towards the body bag lying neatly across the way next to a pool of bleach and solvents.

She held him back. "Fine. I'll have it delivered to your office tomorrow." "Now…" She cut him off, firm and glaring, "No. Let me do my job first. There are things which need to be done."

He wanted to obsess, to empty out the credit cards and tickets, the receipts and appointment cards and imagine this man's life. To pull out the pictures, see the faces of those beloved. To visit the home, see the neighbors, the family, the kids. Emotional trauma was part of her stock in trade, and professional discretion prompted her to protect him from himself. "Tomorrow, Mick," she lied. "We do this my way, one step at a time. For now, let's get you home."

Some part of him, even in the depth of his depression, recognized her authority, remembered similar conversations with clients, and he dropped his eyes, acquiescing. She nodded quickly, opening the car door for him, seeing him seated and staring out the window.

She'd take him home and call Josef, allow him to say again the words Mick needed to hear, but failed, as always to accept. That he was by his very nature a predator, a killer, a wolf wearing a sheep's skin among lambs.

Vampires borrowed life, took it from the living and left them drained, dying or dead. It was the nature of things, and Mick was not exempt. Nor was he new to this experience. The excuses and weaknesses of the newly turned no longer applied. The time to end his existence, or to blink and have someone else do it for him, was long past. Yet he persisted in continuing this half life among the half living, neither able to enter fully in, nor stop himself completely from participating.

He was so stubborn.

Josef feared for him, and so did she. They worried that one day, the brooding, the denials, the self perpetuated torment would finally sap away his will to live, and he'd snuff out all in a relative instant. So few vamps were capable of centuries. Most survived the turning and the separation from the mortal world, but far fewer could tolerate the loss of their era and time, when everything they'd known passed away into newness. Human nature didn't change, but everything else would. Mick was starting to notice. His old haunts were closing or being leveled one by one. The last humans he'd known as a man were creeping slowly into their graves. His ineptitude with technology was growing.

Long term survival depended on acceptance and adaptability, on cleaving to your friends and finding a goal worth pursuing down the ages. Josef hunted wealth and power, things which, once acquired, only led to a desire for more. She cherished her relationships and her responsibilities, the safety she provided to others so they could all continue as a species. Coraline…well, who knew what Coraline wanted. Suffice it to say, she'd convinced herself it required Mick.

Mick found purpose in his work, and in truth his position in vampire society was not that far from her own. He was a cleaner of rogues, a hunter of killers and a protector of secrets. A vampire who felt compelled to extend his efforts into the mortal world, which was his prerogative and his business.

But Mick killed in the performance of his duties, more often than he'd care to admit and frequently with enjoyment. And for every mortal whose life he ended with a snap of the neck or the prick of his fangs and then justified under the guise of 'deserving it,' there was a mother, a father, a wife, children, friends. Someone left behind to mourn and wonder to where their loved one had disappeared, never to be seen again. None one, mortal or vampire, existed in a vacuum.

He was a hypocrite by day and by night, and deep down, he knew it. Everyone knew it. His friends took his moralizing blindness as a good sign and simply waited, hoping that in the end he would choose to join their happy little band of hypocrites and praying that he wouldn't opt out.

Which meant getting him through tonight.

She glanced over at the wreck of him slumped unresponsive in her passenger seat and pulled out her phone, texting a 911 to Josef with a sigh. Professional experience told her that this would be a long night.

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